Are you buried in work? Are you totally overwhelmed by the daily tasks needed to keep your business running and thinking about hiring someone to help ease the burden?

I’m about to save you a shit ton of money and time (and as we know… time is money).

TRUTH BOMBS:

Adding people does NOT make things faster (especially not in the immediate).

Adding people does NOT make things easier (it actually adds a new level of people management into the mix).

The thought that productivity doubles with another person is a myth.

Am I telling you not to hire help and continue to suffer through the tedium of your daily life?

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

But I do think that hiring someone when you’re drowning, without addressing the hole in the boat, is like putting a granite yolk around your neck and calling it a life vest.

You will drown. Faster.

Way back in my software design days, I remember there being a battle. A battle between the higher ups in the company that wanted things done, and the people responsible for actually getting those things done (me). And whenever it appeared as though things might not run to schedule, or more so, when things were going really well and the higher ups decided they wanted to shift deadlines forward, there was this immediate reaction of the higher ups to ADD PEOPLE to the project. The assumption was that adding people would increase movement.

Do you know what though? It’s been proven, time and time again, that adding people is the number one way to add time, add expense and kill your deadline.

Let’s explore this.

Adding people means adding manpower, yes, but it also means adding training and communication. Getting people up to speed on where you are, how you’re doing things, why you’re doing them that way and how they need to do them takes a lot of time (money). So when you bring someone on, your immediate productivity plummets dramatically because as you’re getting someone up to speed, you’re not working.

Adding people means adding resistance. Opinions are like assholes right? And assholes often have the most opinions. I can not tell you how much time I wasted having people brought on to projects, with massive egos, thinking that the existing team hadn’t thought things through thoroughly enough and wanting to reinvent the wheel. (A “better way” of tackling an extremely complex, technical process was once presented to me on a napkin by someone with no business or technical experience whatsoever [and no paper]) I mean, had it actually been a solution, I would have welcomed it. But it was just an opinion from someone who didn’t understand. Which meant more communication. Which, when you’re dealing with egos meant more resistance. And more napkins.

What about the hole in the boat? If you’re sinking, odds are there’s a reason. And so many of us build our businesses with little or no knowledge of how business really works and how to do things most efficiently. Which means bringing someone else on is really just adding weight to sinking ship.

Step 3:: Bring on more shipmates to a solidly floating boat (EFFICIENT AF TRAINING). Keep yourself productive, have someone else train your new staff and know they’re doing things as efficiently as possible whilst you keep your business running and productive with no down time.

When you bring people into a suffering process, you’re really just throwing money at someone who will perpetuate a suffering process. Get your process right. Get yourself EFFICIENT AF FIRST. And watch how that horse trots your cart straight to the bank with ease.

ARE YOU READY TO GET EFFICIENT AF?

Efficiency reviews, process management systems and training to help you AND your bottom line!